In the context of medical procedures, it is often necessary to determine the position and/or orientation of a medical device within a patient's body. For example to safely and accurately navigate the distal tip of a catheter through the body, it is desirable to know the position and orientation of the catheter. Standard imaging methods such as x-ray, CT, or MRI may not provide adequate information for use in navigation. Similarly, methods such as image reconstruction and processing, electrical potential measurements, ultrasound and electromagnetic measurements have been used for this purpose. They typically suffer from a lack of sufficient accuracy due to inherent methodological problems, inhomogeneities in the environment, or interference from the environment.
A convenient method for determining position and orientation of a medical device employs the transmission of time-dependent electromagnetic signals between transmitters at a known location and receivers, or vice versa. In the typical situation, a plurality of transmitters are disposed in fixed, known locations, each transmitting at a difference frequency and one or more sensors on the medical device inside the body. From an analysis of the signals received by the receiver coils, sufficient information may be obtained to determine the desired position and/or orientation of the sensor, and thus the medical device relative to known position and orientation of the transmitters. Various examples of such magnetic localization techniques include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,694,945, 5,846,198, 5,738,096, 5,713,946, 5,833,608, 5,568,809, 5,840,025, 5,729,129, 5,718,241, 5,727,553, 5,391,199, 5,443,489, 5,558,091, 5,480,422, 5,546,951, 5,752,513, 6,092,928, 5,391,199, 5,840,025, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/809523, filed Mar. 15, 2001, and published Nov. 29, 2001, as No. 20010045826, and PCT Application No. PC/US01/08389, filed Mar. 16, 2001, and published Sep. 20, 2001, as WO 01/69594 A1, and PCT/GB/01429, published Nov. 16, 2000, as WO 00/68637, the disclosures of all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The use of time-dependent electromagnetic fields for localization purposes suffers from a significant drawback—in the presence of external electromagnetic scatterers, such as metals, in the environment that can support induced currents, backscatter from these metals can alter the signals received by the receiver coils and lead to significant loss of accuracy in determination of the position and/or orientation. In cases where the external environment is changing, such as moving metals, these changes in signal are not predictable in advance.